Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Supreme Court briefly preserves broad availability of abortion pill. The temporary stay is meant to preserve the status quo while the justices study lower court rulings, and it did not forecast how they would ultimately rule.
-Virtual Clinics Have Been a Fast-Growing Method of Abortion. That Could Change. So far, most telemedicine providers seem undaunted by court rulings that could imperil their business.
-Airman charged in leak of classified documents. Jack Teixeira, 21, was granted a top-secret security clearance in 2021, which was required for his job, the Justice Department complaint said.
-Teixeira’s case is unusual even in the small world of leak cases.
Based on the charging documents, Airman Jack Teixeira does not appear to have been acting as a foreign agent, differentiating him from classic spying cases. He also does not appear to have been acting as a whistle-blower.
-Mike Pompeo says he won’t run for president in 2024. “This isn’t our moment,” said Mr. Pompeo, a former Trump official. But he declined to endorse the former president and obliquely criticized him.
-Republican 2024 hopefuls embrace gun politics at NRA meeting. Several potential candidates showed strong support for gun owners’ rights — a core issue for the party’s base, but a tougher sell in a general election.
-Biden says he will announce 2024 campaign ‘relatively soon.’ The president, who is widely expected to run again but faces little pressure to imminently announce a formal bid, tiptoed beyond his previous public comments on the subject.
-Six takeaways from Trump’s new financial disclosure. In a 101-page filing, Donald Trump revealed lower-than-expected values on his social media company and sizable bank loans.
-Tech executive was left to ‘slowly die’ after stabbing, prosecutors say.
Bob Lee was killed after what appeared to be an argument with someone he knew, prosecutors said in court documents. Tech Leaders Blamed San Francisco for Bob Lee’s Killing. Then Came the Arrest. Some influential tech executives said Mr. Lee’s death reflected a city overrun by crime, but few have reversed course since the arrest of a man who knew the victim.
-New Yorkers have encountered rodents in toilets, on trains, in bed. And that’s not all.
-Japan’s Prime Minister was safely evacuated after blast. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was about to give a campaign speech in the western Japanese city of Wakayama when a loud explosion was heard.
-Gov. Kathy Hochul paid $2M for outside help on State of the State Speeches. Hochul hired two big consulting firms as well as outside ghostwriters to help her prepare the annual addresses.
-Missouri to restrict medical care for transgender adults, citing consumer protection law. In his emergency regulation, the state attorney general said it was necessary to put up “substantial guardrails” around gender-transitioning treatments, because they were considered “experimental.”
-Brazil’s President Lula meets Xi in China as they seek path to peace in Ukraine. Brazil has been reluctant about choosing sides in the war, as its new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seeks to rebuild the country’s ties with Beijing.
-Sylvester Zottola, a reputed Mafia associate, survived repeated assassination attempts. Eventually, his son Anthony’s plot succeeded.
-Seeking visibility, the Pope’s Commission on Sex Abuse gets a new home. In moving from cramped offices to a palazzo, the organization is aiming for more visibility, and to be better able to welcome victims.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Elon Musk is developing plans to launch a new artificial intelligence start-up to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, as the billionaire seeks to join Silicon Valley’s race to build generative AI systems. The Tesla and Twitter chief is assembling a team of artificial intelligence researchers and engineers, said people familiar with the tech entrepreneur’s plans.
-Not only did President Macron have little to show from efforts to convince Xi to limit his support for Russia, he created a diplomatic uproar with an interview on the flight home in which he called on Europe to develop its own stance independent of the US to deal with tensions between Beijing and Taiwan. “The great risk” for Europe is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” Macron said, warning against becoming “vassals” to the US or China. Politicians, diplomats and analysts on both sides of the Atlantic called the remarks tone-deaf and ill-timed given the US has backed European security by bankrolling Ukraine’s defense.
-China is refusing to let US secretary of state Antony Blinken visit Beijing over concerns that the FBI will release the results of an investigation into the downed suspected Chinese spy balloon. Four people familiar with the negotiations said China had told the US it was not prepared to reschedule a trip that Blinken cancelled in February while it remains unclear what the administration of President Joe Biden will do with the report.
-A 21-year-old Air Guardsman suspected of leaking highly classified US intelligence documents made his first appearance in court on Friday, where he was charged with illegally sharing top-secret national defense information. Jack Teixeira entered the courtroom in handcuffs wearing a tan prison uniform, according to local media. A hearing on his detention will take place next week, said the US attorney for Massachusetts, where the case is being heard.
-Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he wants to work with Beijing to “balance world geopolitics” as he wrapped up a three-day visit to China aimed at deepening relations between the two nations.
“We want to raise the level of the strategic partnership between our countries, expand trade flows and, together with China, balance world geopolitics,” said Lula, who since returning to office for a third term in January has sought to reassert Brazil’s role on the international stage.
-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida was evacuated unharmed on Saturday after what appeared to be a smoke bomb was thrown towards him.
According to public broadcaster NHK and government officials, a masked male suspect was arrested at the scene by police at the port of Saikazaki in Wakayama prefecture. Kishida was on the campaign trail ahead of local elections.
-The G7 has privately rebuked Switzerland for not doing enough to combat Russian oligarchs evading sanctions. A letter sent to the Swiss government, signed by G7 ambassadors in Bern on behalf of the group, as well as the EU’s ambassador, said Swiss privacy laws and other “loopholes” were being exploited by Russians to hide billions of francs in offshore assets.
-Hank Paulson caused a stir earlier this year when he wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine with the headline “America’s China policy is not working”. Along with just a handful of other senior US statesmen — notably Henry Kissinger, who will turn 100 next month, and Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, who is 81 — Paulson is going against the grain of America’s hawkish consensus. Perhaps that is why he is pressing his point so hard.
-JPMorgan Chase and other large US banks on Friday reported bumper profits in the first three months of 2023 as they raked in billions of dollars in deposits from customers fleeing smaller lenders following Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in March.
-US prosecutors have unsealed drug charges against 28 defendants, including three sons of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán and Chinese chemicals business owners, as Washington intensifies efforts to crack down on the flow of deadly fentanyl.
-It’s really bad. So bad the Pentagon is not only conducting its own investigation, it also immediately called in the Justice Department to investigate. Over 100 pages of highly classified CIA Operations Center and Joint Chiefs of Staff assessments — some intended only for the five eyes intelligence partners, others not releasable to allies at all — have been exposed. Some are derived from human intelligence, so could put assets at risk; many will reveal to US intelligence targets that their communications are compromised.
NY POST
-Bud Light tweets for first time since Dylan Mulvaney controversy: ‘TGIF’ Bud Light fiasco should wake up corporate America to drop all ‘wokery’. Budweiser factories nationwide hit with bomb threats amid Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light fiasco. Don Lemon weighs in on Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light controversy. Anheuser-Busch’s top executive on Friday offered an apology flatter than a day-old Bud Light as the beer giant reels from the backlash over its sponsorship deal with controversial transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
-Best Buy is cutting store jobs across the US as the electronics retailer looks to trim costs and shift its business more towards e-commerce, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the situation. The layoff would affect hundreds of jobs across Best Buy’s US stores, the report said, adding that the laid off employees could, however, reapply for open positions within the company or receive severance.This week, several store workers who specialize in selling more complex products such as computers and smartphones were told their jobs would be eliminated, the report. added.